“Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces.”

Julius Caesar

Mauritanian public opinion remains dead set against their country’s involvement in Mali. Across the political and social spectrum, not a single meaningful voice called for Mauritania to intervene militarily. Worse, Mauritanian Salafis implicitly endorsed the Jihadis in Mali with an incendiary fatwa. Thus, it is no longer possible to present the Malian war as a foreign matter, it has become an internal political battle. Despite all of this, The “president” General Aziz unilaterally put the country on the path to war.

In the best tradition of a tribal chief, General Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz made a potentially fateful decision in a meeting with his French counterpart. He told the Gauls’ chief François Hollande, that should the chief of the Malians ask for his help, he shall oblige. So is the mindset governing the country’s destiny. This should be a cause for serious concern for anyone contemplating a Mauritanian entry in the conflict.

General Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz’s meeting on Tuesday with François Hollande in Abu Dhabi shook the country’s political class out of its wait-and-see posture. Till that point, only the local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood had declared -unsurprisingly- its vehement opposition to what it calls “the French invasion” of Mali.

As customary with General Aziz, he did not bother issuing any communiqués about the substance of his meeting with the French president. He even excluded his press adviser from the meeting altogether. Mauritanian state media reported the meeting as a routine discussion. It was rather François Hollande who dropped the bombshell during this own press conference: “Mauritania is ready to take its responsibilities vis-à-vis the terrorist threat should the Malian state issue such a request.”

This 180-degree turn of positioning is symptomatic of the man’s style. After multiple public reassurances that he will not enter a war in Mali, he still went ahead and committed to enter the war once it broke out in spite of his own public opinion’s vehement objections to the move. What is his plan to deal with any fallout from his decision? That too will be improvised.

As predicted, the domestic response was swift: all relevant opposition parties in Mauritania rejected wholesale the ongoing war in Mali. Not all of these were knee-jerk. The main opposition party, the RFD sought active measures from all political players to prevent the involvement of the army in the war. The second most important opposition, the UFP, took a softer line by supporting efforts to preserve Mali’s unity while rejecting Mauritania’s entry into the war.

More interestingly, even General Aziz’s own party barons complete silence speaks volumes about the anxiety levels in Mauritania about the Azawad war. One exception was Influential MP Sidi Ould Maham, and head of the regulatory Supreme Justice Court. He rejected the French intervention in Mali on the grounds that “Mauritania and Mali are the same country.” He must have meant to say: “the Mauritanian and Malian people are one.” ُThe most dangerous development so far came from Mauritania’s politically irrelevant Salafis. They did not miss this golden opportunity to make a stand. 39 figures signed a joint public declaration/Fatwa prohibiting and declaring anyone who assists in this war an apostate. This should be an alarm bell to any reasonable observer. Citing the Wala’ wa Albara’ doctrine is an implicit call to jihad. Even more alarming, is that one of the signatories is none other than Al-Majlissi– the allegedly repentant Mufti of Salafi Jihad.

Otherwise, it was refreshing to see condemnations of the Salafi fatwa come speedily and that they were widespread. Many columnists took them on immediately after the statement’s publication. The backlash seems to be working as one of the signatories already backed down from it.

All of these developments have in effect reframed the ongoing war in Azawad into an internal political wedge point. However, this is not merely partisan politics. It’s a deep anxiety about unleashing demons that could shake Mauritania to the core. Unfortunately, no one in Mauritanian society has taken the reasoning against the war to its honest intellectual conclusion. How come so many Mauritanian citizens are waging Jihad next door?

Maybe the answer is t0o unsettling for Mauritanians to contemplate, but it remains a question that must be addressed for the sake of the country’s peace, stability and prosperity. That would be the best help Mauritania’s foreign partners can provide: push for answers, and quickly.

Four days into the French operation in Mali, Mauritania’s government has been conspicuously silent. This not at a surprise as the regime is fully aware of the public opinion’s opposition to any Mauritanian involvement in Aazawad.

Interestingly, the only on the record reaction to the operation from a political group till now has been from the Feb25 youth movement on Saturday. their statement seems representative of the Mauritanian public opinion views on the matter: they reiterated their fundamental objection to any Mauritanian involvement in the ongoing combat in Mali. it indirectly accused France of pushing Mauritania into the Malian war via General Aziz. If anything is to be retained here is that the legacy of Sarkozy’s backing of General Aziz is a serious image problem for France in Mauritania.

We completely and fundamentally reject involving our military in that war. we stress the importance of having a continuous … Of our armed forces’ mission during these unique circumstances.

We also would like to remind the ruling regime that our armed forces’ mission is limited to our national territory with the aim to defend our borders and provide security to its citizens all over the country– particularly those near the [conflict’s] hotspots.

We warn against the consequences of pushing our sons into a conflict outside of our borders fulfilling the wishes of a foreign country that has no regards for their lives, or their families’ fate. We would like to remind the regime of the dire consequences of such a decision.

I spoke to several high ranking opposition members and well-connected players off the record. Their pessimism is sobering: the war in Mali is not going to resolve the terrorist issue, in fact, it might backfire. They do not believe that France, nor the ECOWAS nations can resolve the problem through force alone.

I was told that Mali is a political quagmire: “even if the French beat off jihadis, that does not address the fundamental problem of Azawad: the inability of the Malian state over 50 years to provide services to the citizens is what made the place a fertile ground for extremism. The terrorists have cash, the state does not.” When I pushed my interlocutors on the fact that many fighters in AQIM and MUJAO are Mauritanians and that this should be an alarm bell. I was told that “there will be always nihilists around here. If this war drags on, it could be a destination to thousands of Mauritanian youth who lost all hope in their own State. Give them hope in a life in Mauritania. otherwise, they will try to go to heaven via Azawad. Or they might try to recreate their own Jihad here on Mauritanian soil. Either way, our country loses.”

On the record, Saharamedia published tonight a quick roundup of individual politicians’ views on the war. Interestingly the only one among those with a real political weight is Ahmed Ould Sidi Baba, the current chairman of the non-participatory opposition block COD. Echoing a strongly held belief that General Aziz had covertly backed the MNLA against Mali’s former President Amadou Toumani Touré, he is quoted as saying that: “things would have not gotten to where they are had it not for the involvement of General Aziz through raid into Malian territories, and his support to certain forces in Bamako, there would not have been a coup d’état against the civilian government.”

The local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood has not yet issued an official statement on the matter. Their politburo is reported to be in session tonight to formulate a position. They are the one Mauritanian formation that has the most to lose politically from any faux-pas. They are suspected by many to be sympathetic to some of the Islamist elements in Mali, in addition to their ingrained anti-western worldview.

Columnist Abbas Ould Abraham (@abbassbraham) feels that the Mauritanian involvement in the war will be in function of the intensity of France’s engagement in the operations. He further infers that the Islamist groups in Mali already anticipate a Mauritanian attack. they built strong positions in the Ouagadou woods near the border– a spot that saw a major clash in 2010 between AQIM and Mauritanian troops.

Overall, Mauritanians are not thrilled by this war. However, they are not actively opposing it. As long as their military is not involved in combat operations, and their territory is not invaded they will observe from the sidelines. Even if their territory is invaded, the public opinion will not tolerate any extended incursions inside Malian territories.

Update:

A Mauritanian soldier serving in the Lemghaity base (500 km Northeast of Zoueirate) shot himself. The soldier, according to the report , was protesting the cancellation of his leave to visit his family over 1500 km in the south in Nouakchott. This is not a good indicator of the morale of Mauritanian soldiers in light of the ongoing war next door..

Mauritania’s decision-maker(s) ought to look at this item published today on Saharamedia’s website: “Mauritanian citizens living in the Bassiknou district hosting Malian refugees in the Hodh Elchargui region have been apparently registering as refugees to get food assistance.”

Here, were are not dealing with a simple case of fraud. But rather with an eloquent indictment of the state of affairs in the country: an impoverished population that is living on the margins of the state, and lacking most basic services. As the world gears up to deal with the Jihadi infection next door in Azawad, it should consider learning the lessons of Azawad: if you leave a population living in abject poverty, you will undermine its immunity to radical jihadists. If said population reaches the conclusion that the State is no longer credible, then Islamism becomes a real alternative.

Finally, we are told in the same piece that there are 200000 Malian refugees in Mauritania. The question is rather: How many Mauritanian refugees are there in Mauritania?

“Mon Dieu, gardez-moi de mes amis. Quant à mes ennemis, je m’en charge!”Colonel Taya quoting Voltaire- in his first and last television interview ever- reacting to the news of Aziz’s 2005 coup.

One of my new years resolutions for 2013 is to write here more regularly about Mauritania instead of limiting myself to twitter as I did over the past year. I hope to help readers make sense of that area of the world as we race towards a certain war in Northern Mali. That war could have major consequences for Mauritania’s internal political crisis.

The US Ambassador to Mauritania Jo Ellen Powell gave a very little noticed talk two months ago at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C. Initially, I was excited by the prospect of hearing from her given the current state of affairs in my birth country.

US policy on Mauritania is often a matter of interpretation and speculation given that few media inquiries are made given the low level of interest in that area of the world by the public globally. Thus, seldom do we get to hear a US official’s views on Mauritania issues, let alone candid views. I was in for a major surprise as Ambassador Powell’s remarks were an explosive mix of uninformed commentary, culturally-insensitive inexactitudes topped with a ringing endorsement of Mauritania’s strongman General Aziz. Her unconditional embrace of General Aziz is an anachronism from a bygone era. Two years into the Arab uprisings it is astonishing to see that some official have not interiorized its main lesson: alliances with authoritarian and corrupt leaders under the guise of bringing stability and security are a mirage bound to failure.

The assumptions behind these remarks raise serious concerns about the long-term impact for Mauritania of eventual American policies informed by these highly problematic views. My critique of these views can be broken down into three categories: historical, political, and policy-related. The choice of these categories is not random as they encompass some of the common mistakes and biases prevalent among some Mauritania commentators.

History: Past Glories and Present Wounds

The Ambassador’s tone when speaking about ethnic relations in the country will not win her many friends in any of Mauritania’s communities. Describing Afro-Mauritanians as “closer to Senegal than they are to Mauritania” is a talking point that was used by Baathist ideologues within Taya’s army to deny the citizenship of Afro-Mauritanians. Ultimately, the ethnic massacres and expulsions against them in 1989 were justified by Taya’s regime as: “returning foreign elements where they belong.”

The Ambassador moves on from there to assign the blame for these events collectively to “light-skinned Moors.” The least that can be said of that claim is that it is ahistorical: Taya regime’s responsibility for these atrocities is well-documented. Paradoxically, many of the people responsible for these crimes against humanity still populate today the very military she praises.

When discussing the so-called “Counter-narratives” component of prevalent counter-terrorism practices, Ambassador Powell informs the audience that “Mauritanians do not like to be told how to be Muslim..” and that “..they [Mauritanians] do not like to be told what to think..” These statements gloss over the country’s own narrative about its place in the world and Islam’s role in its power structures.

It is the main pillar of both its social and political history; the cast system both in Moorish and Afro-Mauritanian communities is a direct function of the monopoly and dispensation of islamic knowledge. Social ascension for individuals, clans and tribes in both communities could be achieved in pre-colonial times only through two ways: the gun for warriors, and Islam for Marabouts. In modern times, religion remains one of the fastest ways to climb to the top of Mauritania’s social pyramid in all communities. Mauritanians- like any Muslims – will inevitably be suspicious when a foreign non-muslim tries to advocate the merits of a certain brand of Islam over another.After all, they are acutely aware that they produced most of the ulemas leading the main Sufi orders in all of West Africa over the last 4 centuries. The assumption in the remarks is that an American can “evangelize” Islam in a Muslim society. Any reasonable observer will not take too much convincing to see how counterproductive this attitude can be.

In discussing the Mauritanian opposition, Ambassador Powell candidly channels wholesale General Aziz’s views of his own detractors– the very same talking points he uses to describe them. For starters, the gentleman she calls a “tired old elite whose time has gone”– Ahmed Ould Daddah, is the leader of the biggest opposition party in the country historically and as of today. His party, the RFD, got 16 seats in parliament in the country’s last free and fair electoral cycle in 2006 and 2007 placing it as the single largest opposition party.

Daddah got 47% of the vote against Aziz’s backed candidate in the presidential election that year. A quick review of the electoral results of that cycle paint a more accurate picture of opposition parties electoral weight. Powell’s attitude towards Daddah and the non-participatory opposition reflects the challenge of fully appreciating the complex legacy of Mauritania’s last 20 years of politics and power dynamics. Many players have different motives, they cannot all be explained through ethnic, tribal affiliations alone.

Take for example her assertion that “the Haratine vote will go to Messaoud Ould Boulkheir” because he is the top Haratine in Nouakchott. Not so. Messaoud’s APP party saw the departure of two top Haratine leaders Mohamed Ould Bourbous, and union leader Samoury Ould Biya. Both said their motive of defection is that Ould Boulkheir betrayed the Haratine’s cause. Not to mention that the APP strictly speaking was born of the merger between Arab-nationalists (the Nasseriste flavor) with Haratine historical movement ElHor.

Another interesting view the Ambassador holds is that the Mauritanian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, Twassul, is the country’s biggest party. In the last free legislative elections in 2006, they got 4 seats, well behind the RFD, the leftist UFP (9 seats) and Parliament Speaker Messaoud Ould Boulkheir’s APP (5 seats). A serious handicap Twassul has to overcome is that almost all its leadership is made of Moors who hail from one district: Ouad Naga. Although the party makes a lot more noise on Aljazeera Arabic than its real weight, it still has a long way to go before it can replace the RFD at the top of the opposition. Mauritania’s ikhwanis have yet to capture crucial constituencies one needs to be truly a power to recon with in that society.

Daddah, and his fellow COD member parties do not contest Aziz as such, but oppose the system that allowed him to grow from a bodyguard opening his master’s car door to become the tsar of their destinies. For them, Aziz is only the newest avatar of military regimes rampaging through their country and stifling any democratic institutions since 1978. The army’s hegemony over all matters in Mauritania is what they perceive to be no longer acceptable. For them to be Machiavellian in their dealings is only fair in a polity like Mauritania’s– at times, the instinct of survival trumps against overwhelming odds sound logic. for the Ambassador not to follow the shifting sands is also legitimate only if she were to keep an equal distance from all belligerents.

As of the country’s weak institutions, the ambassador does not fully address the causes of Mauritania’s lack of strong institutions and Aziz’s role in their desolate condition. That weakness played itself out brutally in the weeks following Aziz’s “friendly fire accident.” After the General’s courtiers accompanying him in Paris blocked the military and civilian’s access to him for over 10 days, it became clear that should he be incapacitated and if he refuses to relinquish office, no legal way was available to make a smooth transition. Tragically, a coup was the only way out. Matters were made worse as the state was paralyzed. nothing could be done without the President’s signature.

Articles 40 and 41 of the constitution (PDF link) gives the President, the head of the Senate and the Prime Minister the power to ask the Constitutional Court (supreme court) to declare a vacancy of the presidency. So, the first person on the list was unreachable for 10 days. Next in line, the Senate head, Ba Mbaré, took off with a diplomatic illness. The Prime Minister Ould Mohamed Laghdhaf turned off his phone after getting summoned by the Chief of Staff General Ghazouani to his office. He remained there for 72 hours. The third, and most important party in this process, is the Constitutional Council itself. Even had Aziz being truly incapacitated, it would not have been able to perform its role as 3 of its 5 members had not been sworn in yet. A telling sign was that after Aziz’s short return to Nouakchott, he signed into law a decree banning coups, then he took off back to France.

The lapsed Senate and parliament whose terms were extended (since October 2011) through dubious rulings of co-opted judges are not an inconvenience for Aziz: their strength would spell his doom. By definition, strongmen in our corner of the world do not build strong institutions, they thrive on their weakness. Aziz is no exception, or else, he would have never become president to begin with after launching two coups.

Policy: The Strongman Gambit

The Ambassador’s embrace of General Aziz, and her vocal wishes for the opposition to fail in its attempts to unseat him is the undiplomatic moment par excellence in the talk. Here, the Ambassador of the United States of America is openly advocating for the survival of a corrupt dictator highly contested by the Mauritanian people.

Powell is equally adamant about Aziz being the man fully in charge. Her motives are clear: she believes him to be a responsible and valuable ally in the upcoming war in Northern Mali because he has a strong army. However, her calculus does not seem to include two main factors: the Mauritanian army’s morale and the public opinion’s vehement opposition to any Mauritanian involvement in a war in Mali. The issue is politically sensitive because the war in Azawad is perceived as a war of choice.

On paper, Mauritania’s military is the most natural available choice for fighting AQIM. it is better trained and more disciplined than ECOWAS armies. It is also more experienced in fighting highly mobile hit and run battles inherent to desert warfare. Strong with some of the world’s best desert trackers; and its Saharan ethos of fighting hard, eating little, then going after the enemy as far as their Toyota pickups would get them. With such a romantic outlook, one almost feels nostalgic to the scenes of Lawrence of Arabia storming Aqaba’s fort at the head of an army of battle hardened desert warriors.

In practice, the September 2010 Hassi Sidi battle in Mali saw the Mauritanians ambushed and nearly defeated by AQIM. For days, the military refused to reveal the casualty list until the terrorists posted videos on the internet showing their war booty of large quantities of equipment seized from the Mauritanians. Mind you, these were new “elite” counter-terrorism units created for the purpose of fighting AQIM.

The Mauritanian army’s route in HassiSidi is a result of being poorly led by officers sitting in air-conditioned rooms hundreds of miles behind the front lines. Its NCO’s and troops have little motivation to spill their blood in a conflict they view to be of little consequence to them.

Uncertain of whether their families will be looked after, should they make the ultimate sacrifice like their fallen comrades over the last seven years, their own media tells them they would die not for their country, but on account of some far off Western official. After all had Spain, France, Germany and Italy for years not paid the terrorists millions of Euros to free hostages? If their enemies were armed to the teeth, it was certainly not their fault.

Plagued by a coterie of Francophone senior officers whose very language they can barely understand, Mauritanian grunts wonder why should they be spilling their blood as their bosses amass wealth and glory without ever setting foot in the desert’s scorching heat, let alone fighting along with them. For three decades, their officers were busy competing to outdo each other’s wealth and power.

General Aziz’s positions and commitment to any military operations has been somewhat of a work in progress. He first engaged in pre-emptive strikes at France’s behest against AQIM. Then changed his tone once the protest movement reached unprecedented heights last winter. Then stated more than once publicly that Mauritania will not participate, then the regime hinted that the country will offer logistical support. How come?

Mauritania’s strongman, General Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz, understood better than anyone that the Mauritanian army does not fight in shooting wars. He owes his very position of strongman to that maxim. his genius in toppling Taya was to play on the senior officers’ corps fears of a replay of the catastrophic Sahara war against the Polisario 30 years earlier: fighting a war was out of the question for them, even if it was a national interest.

in August 2005, then-president, Colonel Ould Taya gave a direct order to his military to hunt down AQIM’s precursor – the GSPC – after it attacked and killed Mauritanian soldiers in Northern Mauritania. That order was his last. his undoing was forgetting that in July 1978, after 3 years of warfare against the Polisario, he was among army officers that felt that a putsch was the only way to stop a war of choice. They swiftly deposed the country’s founding father Moctar Ould Daddah, then signed a cease-fire without any meaningful gains to justify the sacrifices made. However, let’s not forget that Mauritania’s entry in that war was in part a result outside interference– primarily fear of Morocco.

Plainly put, the psychological parallels between that period and today are fueling popular rejection of a Mauritanian intervention in Mali. All these factors account for the new Aziz Mali posture: if Mauritania’s borders are not attacked, and terrorist bases are not established within 200 km from its borders then Mauritania will not attack. All told, this is an elegant formula to reconcile the strongman’s internal needs with his needs for Western goodwill: Mauritania’s active involvement in the impending war.

A question worth considering for Western policymakers is: what is the potential political fallout in Mauritania from a military operation in Azawad? Will the Mauritanian military officer corps tolerate a high casualty count? Given that a good portion of the junior officers in the military are natives of regions bordering Azawad, what will their tribes do if they begin to die in big numbers? And the more important question of all: Do Western decision-makers have a Plan B in case things went bad for Mali’s neighbors during the upcoming intervention?

As we say in Mauritania: crooked sticks will always have crooked shades. Hedging so much on a strongman in the post Arab uprisings era is a risky policy. If the fallout in Mauritania from a war in Azawad is not realistically assessed on the basis of facts instead of wishful thinking about the regime’s considerable shortcomings, then we could end up with two failed states instead of one. A perfect host body for an already severe jihadi infection.

Béni oui-oui is a North-African expression from the Frnech colonial period, it is based on the Arabic Beni (plural of Ibn meaning son of) and of the French oui. The term describes servile and automatic agreement of a group of people with any decisions by an authority.

During the recent vote in the Mauritanian parliament on the 2013 budget, MP’s from the UPR, Aziz’s majority “party” raised hell and demanded that the vote be repeated. They discovered that they had voted massively against their own government. Outraged that they backed an amendment introduced by the opposition to increase the Islamic Studies Institute (ISERI) which was exactly what the Finance Minister asked them not to do. Unfortunately for Minister Thiam Diombar, most Aziz’s majority party members did not understand his speech because it was in French. Apparently, the parliament does not have interpreters nor equipment to do the job. Once they got their way and the vote was repeated, they voted massively against the amendment. Noor info reports:

"Rest assured, it's either water or confrontation" photo credit: Al-Akhbar.info

“Give us water or we will take you down” was the unceremonious welcoming General Aziz got today in Magta Lahjar (Brakna Province.) What was supposed to be another on-demand carnival tour of the Brakna province by Aziz’s loyalists, ended up with the strongman reduced to delivering a short speech on top of a car amidst “we want water” chants.

Magta Lahjar, like other towns in the country, saw a rash of protests over the government’s failure to provide drinking water, or basic services. For instance, Aziz was greeted with a wave of protests in Aleg (Brakna’s capital) culminating in arrests and beatings of the youth, many of them members of the UFP and Tawassul opposition parties.

Magta Lahjar’s protesters did not fair any better today; over 30 remain under lock. some were preemptively arrested earlier in the day after anti-regime slogans appeared on walls in the town.

The scene as reported in local media was one of an ambush quickly escalating into a classic street fight: protesters infiltrated the security ring pretending to be loyalists, then broke out in chants while fighting off the police’s attempts to flush them out.

Earlier this week, the authorities violently suppressed a February 25 youth protest in the capital Nouakchott, and a university student demonstration. Today, pro-regime thugs attacked opposition events in the northern cities of Atar (Adrar), and loyalists tried to sabotage an opposition event in the mining town of Zoueirate (Tiris Zemmour.) These attempts to interfere in opposition activities by regime loyalists are yet another warning sign that the crisis is rapidly escalating.

Overall, these events may not stand out in comparison to scenes from Mohamed Mahmoud street in Cairo, or even Sanabis in Bahrain. However, in a nation of 3.8 Million, they are unprecedented. This trend is an entirely new phenomenon far surpassing the Kadihine (Maoists) golden age of street protests in the 70’s.

Far from being ephemeral, General Aziz is increasingly facing a comprehensive protest movement led by an emboldened opposition, and a population driven by the instinct of survival to demand urgent solutions to their most basic needs. Just to further complicate things for Mauritania’s ruler, the opposition is mobilizing for mass demonstrations on the second of May. Aziz will need more than water to put out these fires as he potentially faces either a generalized popular uprising, a coup d’etat, or both.

In Mauritania today, the equation is no longer democracy versus dictatorship, but rather water versus droughts.

Mauritania’s Democratic Opposition Coordination Committee, a coalition of parties allied against General Aziz’s rule, issued on Thursday a 43-page document detailing the current regime’s failures across the spectrum. This document should be read, and viewed, on the basis that represents the views of the biggest factions of the country’s opposition. it provides fresh insights into the thinking of Mauritania’s super politicos on a host of issues, and the hierarchy of problems the country faces from their perspectives.

The authors summed up their views of Mauritania’s dire straits in the on the document’s first page: Political deadlock, institutional crisis, collapse of the Mauritanian State, impoverished citizens, rampant corruption, systematic pillaging of the country’s natural resources, military adventures, and diplomatic incoherence.

The information contained in the document is not new per se, what is new is that the opposition is demanding a national unity government and elections to remedy the unconstitutional parliament that lapsed back in November 2011. Additionally, the last chapter of the document (page 36) has a detailed discussion of the the fact that Mauritania’s institutions today are outside of constitutional legality. A fact, that very few outside observers have either picked on, commented, or even acknowledged.

That constitutional void has consequences beyond the internal political power struggle. For example, It would be worth pointing out to foreign investors that their recent agreements with Aziz are null and void– particularly mining companies that signed any deals with the current government after May 2011.

This is good news to Mauritanians because the current regime had previously signed egregious, and blatantly exploitative deals with foreign companies like Kinross Gold Corporation. That agreement leaves Mauritania with only %4 of the total proceeds of proven reserve of 7.46 Million Ounces of the Tasiast mine. This kind of deals is what is ultimately running the country to the ground by creating a Congo-like formula: Rich Country, Poor People.

It also would be very hard to argue that such deals are corruption-free. Conversely, the problem is that no one is scrutinizing any of these companies’ dealings in Mauritania.

In the final analysis, the facts about Mauritania’s reality speak for themselves: %69 of women, and %51 of youth between 18-24 are unemployed. This is a recipe for a disaster in the making if there are not political solutions to the current crisis.